Roshan Roy Jonah
11 min readMar 16, 2018

Email verification is more of a buzz word in current day and age and it’s growing to be an email marketer’s favourite tool. Email list verification services take in your mailing lists and verify email in them to make sure they are deliverable. They ensure your emails get through to the inbox and warn you of the email addresses that will likely bounce.

Table of Contents

A. How can email validation software verify email with accuracy?
B. Process of Verifying Emails
C. Why is verifying an email address important?
D. Email Verification Service Providers
1. Email Verifier App
2. X-Verify
3. Quick Email Verification

How can email validation software verify email with accuracy?

An email address is validated using various techniques that are generally available to the public. Email validation providers verify email without actually sending an actual email and many wonder how that is possible. Let me explain.

The email validation process involves using a combination of techniques, databases, and algorithms to achieve good results. So obviously you need to look for an email list cleaning program that been around for a while because they will have the best of algorithms that actually work. We also noticed that many providers do not clean Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL emails because they give “Accept-All” status. They say that these email providers will give valid status for any request you put through to them.

Here are a few common things performed in the process of verifying emails:

De-duplication — Where emails that are duplicate are removed from the list to avoid sending emails multiple times to the same contact on your list.

Domain Validation — Where each domain is scanned for its validity. Some providers check whether it is parked/invalid/valid working domain.

Spam trap Check — We found that some providers check for whether an email address looks highly likely to be a spam trap. Once you email a spam trap address, you can be certain that your IP address is going to be blocked for spamming. Learn more

Complainers Check — Some providers check their set of databases to see if an email matches those that have been known to complain or most likely to hit the “Report Spam” button instead of unsubscribing.

Risky Email check — Where emails are checked for how risky it is to send them. We noticed that emails relating to service roles (Eg. Admin) are rated as being higher risk than those addressing a person.

Syntax Check — Emails are scanned according to RFC protocol to ensure they are intact to prescribed format of an email address. Most of our providers did very well in syntax checks.

Mail Server Check — Email domains are scanned to see if they have a working MX server because, without a working and responsive mail server, there is no way your emails are reaching the intended recipients.

Email Quality Scoring — Emails are scored for how good or bad they are based on various variables that service providers test for. One good example is how service role emails (Eg. admin) are given a lower score than emails that belong to specific people.

Why is verifying an email address important?

Removal of such invalid email is crucial when you want to uphold your reputation as a credible sender. You want to land in the inbox and this is one sure way of ensuring that will happen.

Another good reason to using email verification services is to ensure you have authentic leads. Many websites and services often ask for the person’s email address before giving them a trial account or delivering the message to their sales team to chase up. You often find that there are users who intentionally or sometimes unintentionally type in incorrect non-existent email address. This will lead to a lost sale and possibly a long-term customer.

If you build your email list with these invalid emails, your bounce back ratio will be quite high. Large email service providers like Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, and other ISPs will eventually notice this high bounce back ratio and it will affect your email deliverability negatively.

The IP address you are sending your emails from will also be affected so if you were planning on sending bulk email marketing campaigns, it would be close to an impossible task to get back in the good books with these providers. Removal of invalid email addresses helps you achieve a higher return on investment (ROI).

This is exactly what email verification services help you get to. They ensure your mailing list stays clean and contain only valid emails, reducing your bounce back rate and saving you money from spending on those extra email sending credits. Email validation is essential to ensure maximum deliverability rates and eliminating low-quality email addresses.

We have listed some of the top email list verification services with their pros and cons so you can decide on the one that suits you the best. You can send your marketing campaigns having a peace of mind that you are getting in touch with actual users.

Email Verification Service Providers

1. Email Verifier App

email verifier app

Email Verifier App is portrayed as an industry leader in email verification services. They claim to guarantee their results by giving up to 98% accuracy guarantee. To date, they claim to have verified in excess of 2 billion emails and preventing close to 678 million bounces. So clearly they have good industry knowledge as an email validation service provider.

NOTABLE FEATURES

Advanced List Cleaning

They have a proprietary email cleaning system that takes your emails through 12 stage email verification process so as to identify all potential problems. They protect your email reputation by eliminating typos, spam traps, complainers, disposable emails and others. Through Email Verifier, you can be assured of sending to valid emails and generating high-quality and high-value leads.

Spamtrap & Complainers

Their email list cleaning involves getting rid of spam-trap and complainer email addresses from your mailing list. They do this by using their proprietary system and huge databases they have obtained over the years. They intelligently scan through the list of email addresses and are accurately able to pinpoint whether an email address matches to those they collected. If it does, it is automatically marked as a risky and bad email address. Their collection of emails includes close to 380 million spam trap records and 128 million complainer records.

Email Verification API

They are big on APIs. Email Verifier App provides three email verification APIs to suit the needs of every type of marketer. A single email address verification API allows you to verify a single email on whether it exists or not. This is all done programmatically. They even provide sample codes so you can use it in the language of your choice. Form validation or Form Verification API is another variation where you can check email addresses that are entered in one of your lead or contact forms. This allows you to stop illicit bots getting in touch with you without a proper email ID. The last of their API is Bulk Email Verification API. This API allows you to verify an entire mailing list without having to log in to their control panel. They even have API to tell you the email list cleaning progress and another API to download the verified email lists securely.

OUR REVIEW — 5 out of 5

Cost: Monthly Plans start at $35/10,000 Email Verifications | Pay as you go plans start at $0.0046/email
Free Trial: Yes, every new account gets 100 free API credits and $2 credit to verify up to 4500 emails
Email Verification API: Yes, they offer email verification API, form verification API, and bulk email verification API
Accept Custom Jobs: Yes, contact their support to arrange custom jobs
Guaranteed Accuracy: They guarantee up to 98% of all the email lists they clean
Bulk Email Verifications: Yes, they allow bulk verifications
Turn Around Time: A list of 10,000 takes less than 5 minutes
Complainers Email Check: Yes, they check against 128 million complainer pattern
Spam Trap Email Check: Yes, they check against 380 million spam trap email pattern
High-Risk Email Check: Yes, they mark high-risk emails on your list
Catch-All Check: Yes, they detect accept-all/catch-all email addresses
Disposable Email Check: Yes, they check for DEA emails on your list
Requires Additional Softwares or Download: No, it is all online — SaaS solution
Support Reputation: They have excellent 24/7 support including live chat, email tickets, and phone support

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

o. Unbalanced Delimiter Check — Allows their system to intelligently scan across a range of email addresses to see if they are out of balance from a normal email address.

o. SendEV Score — A proprietary scoring system that allows the system to intelligently score emails based on how likely the recipient will respond. A high-quality email is given a score (vice-versa).

o. Typo-Suggest or Typo Correction — Intelligent suggests a possibly mistyped email address by checking its domain and suggesting closely associated domains for a match.

o. High Accuracy with Yahoo & Hotmail — Claims to have high accuracy with emails from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL where other providers classify them as “Accept-All” or “Catch-All” addresses.

o. Privacy Policy & Data Retention Policies — This information can be found on their website privacy policy statement. They have a separate list data privacy policy.

Visit Email Verifier App | Contact Email Verifier App

2. X-Verify

x-verify

X-Verify claims itself as an intelligent email verification tool providing trusted solutions to digital marketers with their proprietary send shield technology. Some of its customers praised its solution by saying things like, “Email verification has really improved my email deliverability. I no longer get fake email addresses, and no longer have a problem with hard bounces. My email open rates are higher and everything is performing better. I’m glad I found the XVerify tool and would highly recommend it to everyone”.

They promise to eliminate hard bounces, reduce complaints, protect against fraud, and increase deliverability. Their motto is to eliminate all possible hard bounces to improve the email deliverability of online marketers. They boast in data intelligence, batch uploading, implementation, and ease of increase high-quality lead data.

Their email validator checks each unique email address to make sure the username is registered at the domain level. They also put each email through their intelligent built-in fraud protection system to make sure they are not belong to a known fraudster, temporary email service provider or linked to spammers in any way.

NOTABLE FEATURES

Increase Deliverability

As your data quality improves, so will your sender score. Engaging in the best practices will boost your campaign performance.

Batch Uploading

Want to quickly and effectively clean up a large data set? We have a great drag and drop uploader, access to an FTP.

Data Intelligence

Instantly knowing which email accounts are not safe to send to helps you filter out potential problems when you send.

Implementation

Have verification immediately work with your web form. Plug in our Javascript or tap into our superfast API for more control.

OUR REVIEW — 3.8 out of 5

Cost: Plans start from 500 emails and $70/10,000 email verifications
Free Trial: Yes, they provide 100 free email verifications
Email Verification API: Yes, they provide email verification API
Accept Custom Jobs: Yes, contact their support
Guaranteed Accuracy: They guarantee up to 98% accuracy
Bulk Email Verifications: Yes, they support bulk email verifications
Turn Around Time: Milliseconds on API and Batch Verification varies as per file size
Complainers Email Check: Yes, they detect complainers to increase sender reputation
Spam Trap Email Check: No, they don’t detect spam-traps
High-Risk Email Check: Yes, they remove any invalid emails or likely to be invalid ones
Catch-All Check: Yes
Disposable Email Check: Yes, you can use it to prevent temporary or disposable email addresses
Requires Additional Softwares or Download: No additional software required. Runs online
Support Reputation: 24/7 Support available to all clients

Additional Features:

o. Send Shield Technology — Built-in Send Shield technology minimizes your risk of fraud with emails

o. IP Blacklist Monitoring — Monitor your own sending IPs to detect blacklisting and further avoid bad sender reputation

o. Privacy Policy and Data Retention Policy — Check the privacy policy on their website.

Visit X-Verify Website | Contact X-Verify

3. Quick Email Verification

quickemailverification

Quick Email Verification claims itself as the most trusted email verification service provider. It verifies email lists and sends emails that hit the inbox and would never bounce. They guarantee up to 95% deliverability across all the email list they clean. To date, they have verified in excess of 455 million email addresses and prevented over 154 million bounces. They claim to be trusted by most popular email marketing service providers including Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Emma, AWeber, GetResponse, and others.

Validating emails with them allows you to benefit from bulk email verification, verification statistics, real-time email verification, personalized support, highest accuracy, 99% customer satisfaction, quick turnaround, low prices and much more. They bulk email verification tool allows you easily drag and drop your email lists with ease from your favorite email marketing service provider. The email address verification is done so you can either download the list verification report, unsubscribe invalid and risky emails from the ESP account. The verification statistics will give you true insight into your mailing list whilst the real-time email verification helps power your web forms to avoid incorrectly typed email addresses.

NOTABLE FEATURES

Bulk Email Verification

Email List Cleaning is as easy as drag & drop. You may either upload email list from your computer or import the subscriber list from your Email Service Provider (ESP) for validation. Once email address verification is done, you can either download list verification report or unsubscribe invalid and risky emails from your ESP account.

Verification Statistics

View detailed statistics of the verification results. Graphical Analytics will give you quick insights of quality email addresses and important contacts.

Real Time Email Verification

A simple copy-paste of a couple of lines of code will provide you the power to verify email addresses real-time, using our REST API. Real-Time email validation API service protects your web forms and prevents unreachable and risky addresses from entering your database.

OUR REVIEW — 3.5 out of 5

Cost: Starts with a lowest 500 email plan, but costs $60/10,000 email verifications
Free Trial: Yes, they offer 100 free email validations
Email Verification API: Yes, they offer real-time email verification API
Accept Custom Jobs: Yes, contact their support
Guaranteed Accuracy: They guarantee up to 95% deliverability
Bulk Email Verifications: Yes, they allow bulk list verifications
Turn Around Time: Takes less than 3 hours to validate 200,000 emails
Complainers Email Check: Yes
Spam Trap Email Check: No, they do not check for spam trap indicators
High-Risk Email Check: Yes
Catch-All Check: Yes
Disposable Email Check: Yes, they get rid of disposable emails
Requires Additional Softwares or Download: No additional software is required to run the cleaning
Support Reputation: Offers 24/7 support to all its customers

Additional Features:

o. Fast List Cleaning — 200,000 email addresses can be processed in 2 to 3 hours using their SaaS application online

o. High Accuracy with Yahoo & Hotmail — They have good reputation for cleaning Hotmail and Yahoo email addresses

o. Third Party Integrations — They integrate well with lots of ESPs like Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, Vertical Response and more

o. Privacy Policy & Data Retention Policy — You can see the privacy policy on their website.

Visit QuickEmailVerification | Contact QuickEmailVerification